UGA grad looks for life in the stars

Arts and Entertainment Reporter

Every star in the solar system has a goldilocks zone — a place that’s not too hot, not too cold and could possibly support life.

NASA scientists call that part of a star’s orbit the habitable zone, and since 2009 the Kepler Mission spacecraft has tracked up to 170,000 stars simultaneously, scanning to find signs of life-sustaining planets within the zones.

Roger Hunter, project manager for NASA’s Kepler Mission, will deliver a free lecture on the University of Georgia campus today at 4 p.m. in Room 202 of the Physics Building. The UGA graduate will outline the mission’s objectives, its results and its future goals.

“We haven’t found exactly what we are looking for,” Hunter said. “But it’s only a matter of time.”

At a press conference in December, Hunter announced that the telescope stationed inside the Kepler Mission spacecraft discovered well over 2,000 planets during its brief time in space.

Forty of those are in habitable zones, Hunter said, meaning the planet is far enough away from its star to allow water to pool on its surface. Out of the 40, about 10 are similar to Earth’s size.

“This is an exciting period in human history,” said Robin Shelton, associate professor in UGA’s department of physics and astronomy. “Not only have planets been found around other stars, but some of the found planets might be pleasant places to live. They might be pleasant because on such a planet, it would be possible for water to be in the liquid state, neither boiled off nor entirely hardened into ice.”

Hunter said when designing the mission, scientists used our sun, a G2 dwarf, as model to help them account for noise — anything that disrupts the telescope’s electrical signal — when collecting data.

But 86 percent to 90 percent of the stars the Kepler Mission monitors are noisier than the Earth’s sun, Hunter said, which will require an extended observation period.

Pushing the mission past its initial three-and-half year schedule would seem difficult in light of federal budget cuts, Hunter said.

But given the results they’ve collected so far, he said the Kepler scientists made a compelling argument for extending the mission at review in February. Just this month, the NASA review board decided to give the Kepler Mission four more years to complete its research.

While the Kepler Mission is a “planet hunter,” said Hunter, the data collection is turning up some “very strange” and unexpected information about stars, igniting and reengaging the interest of astronomers across the world.

“We think the most astonishing discoveries are yet to come,” Hunter said. “It’s going to change the way we view ourselves in this galaxy.”